Martin Scorsese, Regina King, Chloe Zhao, Tom Ford, Sofia Coppola.
Hollywood glamor has joined forces with the Met Costume Institute for the launch of "In America - An Anthology of Fashion", a series of often forgotten stories that have made American fashion great.
For the exhibition, which will open to the public on May 7, First Lady Jill Biden bothered: "A dress sometimes speaks more than a thousand words", said the president's wife, invited by Anna Wintour to whom the Costume Institute is dedicated, recalling the one worn for the State of the Union speech, with a national flower of Ukraine applied on the sleeve to signify unconditional support for the country at war.
The exhibition is the second chapter after "A Lexicon of Fashion" dedicated to the stars and stripes style.
Nine directors used 13 period rooms of the American Wing for a series of "tableaux vivants": from the anonymous tailors of the end of the 18th century to the mid-1970s, passing through the Gilded Age and Ann Lowe, great-grandson of slaves, who dressed Jackie Bouvier for her marriage to John F. Kennedy.
Point of arrival and "pièce de resistance" is the installation by Tom Ford.
Mannequins made in Tokyo by a martial arts expert compete with foil in the oval gallery that houses the panoramic painting by John Vanderlyn to recreate the 1973 "Battle of Versailles", the epic clash between five American and five French designers in the sumptuous frame of the palace.
The Americans won and for the first time the French were forced to admit that the US understood something about fashion.
The exhibition coincides with the 75 years of the Costume Institute and the curator Andrew Bolton (author of other blockbusters such as Alexander McQueen, Anglomania, Camp, Punk and Heavenly Bodies) has chosen one hundred garments, then giving to Ford and colleagues - also involved Radha Blank, Janicza Bravo, Autumn de Wilde and Julie Dash - carte blanche to bring them back to life.
Sofia Coppola has just finished a film based on a novel by Edith Wharton, "L'Usanza del Paese".
With Schubert's music mixed by her husband Thomas Mars, she recounted in the Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room the emergence of designers in New York during the Gilded Age, the decades at the end of the 19th century that inspired, in addition to the series signed by Julian Fellowes, the theme of tonight's gala: "Gilded Glamor and White Tie".
Directed by Zhao from "Nomadland" and the narrating voice of Frances McDermott, the Shaker rooms host devoted women dressed by Claire McCardell who in the 1930s fixed the principles of sportswear including utility and simplicity.
With an eye on diversity and inclusion, "Daughters of the Dust" Julie Dash set the figure of Lowe in the Renaissance Revival Room.
The idea is to also tell who remained "a footnote": Regina King did justice to Fannie Criss Payne, black milliner who overcame the ostracism of the Virginia whites and made her fortune in Harlem.
As for Scorsese, he was inspired by one of his favorite films, John Stahl's "Leave Her in Heaven", a "Noir in Technicolor", to place a wake in the living room of Frank Lloyd Wright's 40s house, with a young woman dressed in mourning by couturier Charles James.
A "frame that opens up to many outcomes", said the director, leaving the Met audience to imagine what will come next.